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The noose tightens on Tibet

The AP reports on the 15 year prison sentence handed down to a Tibetan NGO boss. It seems he was a Beijing favorite until he went public in support of his brothers, who’d been arrested and sent to prison camps for airing charges of animal poaching against local officials. There’s more on the man, Karma Samdrup, and the sorry state of Tibetan activists and intelligentsia in general in this NYT profile. Money quote:

Those who study Beijing’s Tibet policy say the authorities appear to have extended their deep-seated suspicions to the Tibetan educated and well-to-do, a tactic some say could radicalize a segment of the population that had come to accept the imperfections of Chinese rule.

“For the first time, we’re seeing the government attack a group of people who previously had nothing to do with politics,” said Robbie Barnett, director of the modern Tibetan studies program at Columbia University. “These are cultural products of the Communist Party, people who were brought up by the system.”

No matter how many factories they open, how many KFCs they build, how many players they send to the NBA, the People’s Republic of China remains a brutal dictatorship. Just remember this the next time Thomas Friedman prays that America could be like China for a day.